Bio

Born and raised in a large extended family from Indianapolis, Indiana, Kynon Jade Benjamin is proud to be the first doctor in his family. Dr. Benjamin earned his GED with the support of his family before moving on to Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). At IUPUI, Dr. Benjamin completed his work study at a neuroscience research laboratory, which started his scientific research journey. In his predoctoral studies, Dr. Benjamin designed and implemented drug delivery and drug development assays as well as developed bioinformatic pipelines for differential expression analysis for Angelman syndrome - a neurodevelopmental disorder. In his subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he developed computational pipelines for large-scale transcriptional (bulk and single-cell), genetic, and functional associations analyses in postmortem brain and brain (cerebral and striatal) organoids.

The primary goal of Dr. Benjamin’s research is to improve therapeutics for under-research communities (i.e., personalized medicine) via investigating ancestry differences for neurological disorders in relevant tissues. To this end, he uses and develops computational tools to examine the role of ancestry in the brain. In addition to this, Dr. Benjamin has established collaborations to use computational tools to address hypthesize driven question with publically available single-cell and bulk tissues.

Throughout his research career, Dr. Benjamin’s experiences have reinforced the critical need for diversity and creating inclusive spaces. As such, he has worked to provide mentorship and representation as well as advocate for opportunities for other underrepresented minorities.

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